In the homeowner's insurance industry, carriers face costly exposure to inaccurate payments, lawsuits, reduced business, and lost shareholder value due, in part, to adjusters' inconsistent and inaccurate methods of inspection, data gathering, and reporting. Furthermore, carriers miss significant opportunities to collect statistical and quantitative analytics that provide effective cost controls and much needed intelligence.
Estimating software products, such as Xactware, MSB, Symbility, and the like, have roof sketching tools that enable users to draw a roof themselves. However, these tools have limited functionality. Aerial CAD companies, such as EagleView, Precigeo, Geoestimator, and the like, can provide information about roof facet line types and roof facet directionality. Using either of these current types of tools, a user must determine, based on the limited information available, which roof facets and roof facet lines to replace. Using the limited, and often inaccurate data, the user must also determine the roof facet area quantities and roof facet line quantities that to replace. Furthermore, users make decisions about whether to replace or repair each roof facet or line based on the limited and often inaccurate data. Some current tools make use of inspection data input by a user to assist in the analysis. However, again that data can be suspect because it is subject to the user's interpretation and the interpretation is based on a limited quantity and quality of data.
For example, storms that cause wind and hail damage to buildings are directional. Therefore roof facets on the same roof have varying degrees of damage. This makes a repair vs. replace analysis and estimating repairs for a building subjected to directional storm difficult. Consequently, errors occur in estimating repair and replacement costs, the amount of materials required, and the amount of resulting waste material. More important, errors occur in determining whether fixing a facet or line requires a repair or replacement or whether it requires fixing at all. Pricing tools also exist to assist in determining labor and material costs for repair or replacement. Again, however, those tools have limited functionality and operate on incomplete or potentially inaccurate data.
In using existing tools, a user must select which roof facets to include in the roofing material installation. The user uses the individually calculated roof facet area quantities or the summed roof facet area quantities and adds a waste amount to the quantities after the fact. The waste amount that users add is meant to pay for the partial shingles that cannot be used in the installation and sometimes the ridge caps and starter strips. The added waste amount often ranges anywhere from eight to twenty-five percent. The waste amount is either a predetermined amount set by a guideline, for example an insurance guideline, or a user's judgment call based on the roof's structure or the material required.
Moreover, multiple, conflicting requirements or guidelines may apply to the property, thus introducing further complexity in the repair analysis. Current building code rules are created by the International Code Council (ICC). Local municipalities choose which code books that they want to follow. The municipalities adjust and augment the ICC codes for their local area. In the United States alone, there are about 80,000 municipalities. Consequently, it is difficult for insurance companies and roofing contractors to determine which municipalities a home is within and what the building codes are for those municipalities. The same issues apply in other countries as well.
Many different types of building materials are used today and oftentimes are difficult to identify by insurance adjusters or contractors. For roofing material, sample shingles from the property must be sent offsite for analysis to determine the manufacturer and shingle type so that a proper repair or replacement can be completed. This analysis takes time and the full determination of cost must wait for the analysis to be complete.
Further, even before an adjuster or contractor is onsite to inspect or repair damage, a homeowner or property owner may have no idea if the property is damaged. And after damage-causing events, contractors often try to generate business by going door-to-door in potentially-damage-affected areas. Because a property owner likely does not know whether the property is damaged, the property owner will not know whether to trust the visiting contractor. Indeed, without having been able to inspect the property, even the contractor will not know whether the property is damaged.
Although present devices and systems are functional, they are not sufficiently accurate or otherwise satisfactory. Accordingly, a system and method are needed to address the shortfalls of present technology and to provide other new and innovative features. What is needed is a system and method for combining available data for providing accurate repair vs. replacement analysis and material and cost estimation. In particular, a system and method is needed to scientifically calculate, based on disparate data sources and particular installation procedure requirements as described above, the actual amount of building material required for installation. Further, a system or method is needed for intelligently deciding which building facets are in need of replacement or repair because current solutions based on disparate data sources such as inspection data, including weather data, insurance guidelines, and building codes. Additionally, a system or method is needed for accurately and quickly determining the amount and type of building material required for a repair or replacement, the amount of waste that will be generated, and the amount of waste that can be recycled.